How to Fix Your Nest Thermostat When it Won’t Respond

If you have a Nest Thermostat you have probably read about the recent issues and may be living in fear of being left without heat in the dead of winter. 

But fear no more! 

Nest Support has published an informative page with the very convenient title “What to do if your Nest Thermostat has become slow, unresponsive, or won’t turn on.” Obvious, much? 

For complete instructions, go to their Nest Support page. For a more basic summary, keep on reading: 

Nest Thermostats that were updated at the end of 2015 or beginning of 2016 to software version 5.1.3 or later may have some issues, including becoming unresponsive, not effectively charging the battery, or going down completely. Nest recommends recharging and restarting your thermostat to rectify the problem and get it up and going again. 

Indications of this issue include the following: 

  • The thermostat not working in the Nest application and disconnected from the Wi-Fi 
  • The thermostat alerts you that the battery is low and it needs to shut down 
  • The thermostat’s animated properties are slower than usual 
  • The thermostat shows a message saying, “Please remove the thermostat from its base, then reattach it;” 
  • The thermostat’s display won’t light up and unresponsive (you may also have a blinking red or green light above the display) 
  • The thermostat can’t control the corresponding heating and cooling system(s) 

If your Nest Thermostat is on but you can’t control it or it’s slow, try manually restarting it and turn the thermostat off and then back on again. If your Nest Thermostat is off and won’t turn on, take the thermostat off the base and charge it using a a USB charger plugged into the wall or a computer. 

PLEASE NOTE: Do not try to restart your thermostat while it’s still connected to a computer for charging. (They didn’t go into detail why, but if Nest says don’t do it, DON’T.) 

After approximately 10 minutes of charging, unhook the Nest Thermostat from the USB cord. If the component has turned on during this time, turn it off and then turn it back on again, manually restarting the thermostat. Once it has restarted completely, plug it back in to complete charging. After another 60 minutes of charging, unhook the Nest Thermostat and reconnect it to its base. 

You should be good to go at this point, but  if you’ve had enough and want to change your thermostat, you can read our comparison of common thermostats.  

If you have tried both of these processes and the Nest Thermostat is still having issues, you will need to bring in some experts. Enter us! If Service Experts Heating, Air Conditioning & Plumbing installed your Nest Thermostat, please give us a call at 866-397-3787 or schedule an appointment online. 

And if you have another problem, such as a warning from Nest that your furnace is shutting down, then your thermostat may not be the problem at all. You may need to call Service Experts Heating, Air Conditioning & Plumbing as one of the U.S.‘s premier furnace experts to fix your system.  

Also, do not let this experience scare you about your Nest’s reliability. By owning and properly utilizing Nest, your thermostat is actually saving money for you all hours of the day. When set it up properly, Nest intelligently learns your lifestyle, then alters your heating and cooling use to optimize energy savings constantly, which typically results in payback within 12 months. And, Nest is still one of the only thermostats under $300 on the market that does this. So don’t let one complication get you down. You were smart to invest in a Nest, because a smart thermostat is still one of the top investments in your home that you can make. 

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